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Ask the Chief: an entrepreneur never ceases learning new things

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Becoming self-employed is not as difficult as keeping your enterprise healthy (and hopefully profitable) a few years later. A few decades ago, my venture into self-employment did not account for the market changing, making my side gig unprofitable almost at the start (consumer electronics and small appliances became cheaper to replace than repair). Fortunately, during the ’90s my Active Navy service provided a decent living for a single man. In 2001, I married shortly after I became a Reservist. That Navy Reserve income plus my civilian job kept a roof over our head, children fed and contributed to our retirement savings. However, when I turned sixty, my wife and I decided to start a business. It was a niche opportunity that she and I both were suited to fill. Before “burning our boats” and committing to self-employment fully, my wife continued to hold a jobs for several months.

keys to a successful enterprise

The first advice we had learned years before, was to not stop working for someone else until we had continuing income from our new project. Additionally, receiving a small pension from the Navy beginning that year allowed us to keep the dream going. With most of our income servicing businesses in a segment of the healthcare industry, And then, the global pandemic caused businesses to falter and many to fail. But the fact that nursing care and supplying new nursing workers was “essential”, kept our business services fully engaged. And now, after four years as an entrepreneur, the small business my wife and I started has regional and national clients.

a business mentor

While together we had years of expertise in various aspects of our services, developing a business plan, obtaining financing, organizing, then streamlining the infrastructure, cutting costs and determining how to be more efficient in operation took shape over a few years. While experience is a great teacher, and failure often breeds a “never quit” in those whom are destined to be successful, it is easier for entrepreneurs follow other successful entrepreneurs, including having a mentor or coach who is trusted to give constructive criticism as well as advice. We took advantage of resources available to get our business started by getting needed guidance from the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA funds advisers to help entrepreneurs, at no cost (the local offices are funded by the government) in many communities throughout the US. Other resources exist including a national organization of business professionals who volunteer through SCORE, conducting seminars and mentoring small businesses. And businesses can find assistance through networking in local Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Club.

formal and Non-Traditional Education

Formal education may be an option though challenging for the self-employed. Several sailors when I was on Active Duty, attended classes which were paid for by Tuition Assistance. Reservists and veterans used the GI Bill, and veterans with certain VA disability ratings were able to complete baccalaureates or post-graduate programs tuition-free. For most who intend to be self-employed, it comes down to what is required by a particular industry, and what the market dictates is required to be successful. In a technology sector, a self-employed engineer often must have a certain education level and industry-recognized certification to be a contractor. A welder who demonstrates the requisite skills, may be fully employed without a college degree. Continual education, through reading, attending seminars, participating in industry conferences and sitting on corporate boards, never ends for a business leader, or those who are working toward self-employment. Many universities offer continuing education programs, for executives, managers, and entrepreneurs, online, off-campus, and in evening and weekend formats. (Peers at my former employer gained various Program Management Institute credentials through such training and passing a certification exam.)

Informally, I know several who became successful through intensive preparation by reading textbooks, trade publications, study guides, and practicing in home workshops and computer labs. They passed certification exams easily, found employment, and with additional skills, became employed at higher levels of responsibility until becoming entrepreneurs.

education for the self-motivated at low or no-cost

For the last twenty years, a cooperative project between universities and the government has made thousands of college course available online tuition-free. Recently, I accessed MIT’s Open CourseWare (OCW) for a graduate course, Managing and Volunteering in the Nonprofit Sector. These have lecture notes, assignments and readings. With a little research, articles and books which are in the reading list, can be found through libraries, read online or purchased used from online retailers. (A personal favorite has become alibris.com).

reading is fun-damental

I have purchased books on several different topics, from language, biblical resources, gardening, and business from several sources:

  • alibris.com
  • thriftbooks.com
  • amazon.com
  • Goodwill
  • libraries

Having completed the first book I obtained in the above mentioned course, Managing the Non-Profit Organization, by Peter Drucker (1990), I am becoming acquainted with the principles and practices that not only apply to my for-profit company, but also with a non-profit organization, a church, I wish to aid. Other books in the university course focus on leadership, vision, communication, marketing, and employee (volunteer) performance. Access to books in any number of subjects is available in libraries, through stores selling used books, and through Internet access which is generally available throughout the world. Books can overcome the is one of the oldest avenues to learning that does not require large investment, nor computer access. For those who have computer and access to the Internet, a course syllabus from a free course (OCW) is easy to find.

As someone once said, “if you aren’t learning, you’re dying” (William S. Burroughs, paraphrased). There is always someone who takes advantage of tools and materials to advance his or her goals. If you still want to wing it, remember a young man in Sierra Leone, in Africa who taught himself engineering and is helping change his world.

Port o’ call : Cyprus

Eric Saretsky2 Comments

On a Mediterranean deployment aboard USS PETERSON (DD-969) thirty years ago, I visited an Irish pub in Limassol, Cyprus. While a tourist destination for many British and Irish citizens, the island has had its share of trouble and even war, with the northern part of the island dominated by Turkish Cypriots and in the south, Greek Cypriots. For decades, the United Nations has maintained a truce between the two halves of the disputed island as a result. Though I got to see firsthand the uneasy relations between the two NATO countries (while conducting naval exercises with one country’s navy, we were overflown by jets of the other!), the port city of Limassol catered to tourists as well as the UN troops on liberty. Although my 2 shipmates and I were as versed as any about the political situation (given we were cryptologists), we followed command direction to blend in with other tourists (ballcaps, collared shirts, and short hair) to not stand out as Americans and to avoid any discussion of politics or our missions. We were just looking for a few beers and to explore the beach after several weeks at sea since our last port.

Sean’s Irish Pub was run by an Irishman and his daughter, serving both British and Irish beers and liquor. Talk about soccer teams was as peaceably divisive as with any sports fans in the USA. One of the patrons we chatted with was a Dublin businessman who amiably offered that Muammar Ghaddafi was a pleasant fellow he had business dealings (this was 1994, eight years after the US retaliated against him for sponsoring terrorism). It was best to let that slide. Being of Polish descent (dad) but Irish on my mother’s side (I neglected to mention they were Protestants), Sean made a couple of toasts over good Irish whiskey. We met and had a couple of drinks with one of the UN troops there – I forget whether he was Irish or British. The thing I do remember is that this pub catered to both the Irish and the Brits, but they came by at different hours. And the pub would either have a more “independent Ireland” or “welcome British” atmosphere (both Irish and UK flags displayed, ) depending on the clientele hosted.

Port o’ call: memories of Cartagena Spain

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“JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD”

Navy recruiting slogan in the mid- 20th Century

Several years of High School Spanish, as well as years living in southern Arizona near the Mexican border, made travel in Latin America easier. Traveling to Spain, on the other hand, was a little more of a challenge. Though I had a Freshman year of castellano, Madrid-dialect Spanish, I soon found that they do not necessarily speak “Spanglish” or the Sonoran (Mexico) dialect there.

My second Mediterranean deployment on the USS PETERSON, a SPRUANCE-class guided-missile destroyer, began in October, 1994. One of the first ports we visited was Cartagena, Spain. Located in the state of Murcia, it is a port city that has seen sailors on its streets for a few thousand years. Having lived in or visited modern cities, from San Francisco to New York City, seeing a Roman-era coliseum and medieval architecture – much of it incorporated into modern structures- made some of the oldest American buildings practically new.

I ventured out on liberty alone, trusting that my Spanish would help me get around. Being adventurous and with an affinity for foreign languages, Europeans were more open and chatty to me (Except for a Northern Italian shopkeeper who must have assumed I was an arrogant German -but that’s for another story). A family-run cafe, Restaurante Casa Pepe, (a small lighter I kept all these years in trinket box, reminds me of that port visit), welcomed me. I learned that eggs and bacon are served a little differently there. Chatting with the family, the son who was about my age, offered to show me around his city. He enjoyed correcting my pronunciation, teasing my accent. I teased him that he didn’t speak Spanish either. Murcia has a distinct dialect from Castilian or other Latin dialects, where “c”s often are spoken pallatized (a “th” sound), e.g., “Mur’th’ia ” . One of the buildings in the older part of the city near the waterfront was elevated to display a site that I recall pre-dated the Roman times. It may have been Phoenician. I should plan to visit the places I saw while in the Navy. Now that I am thirty years older, I imagine my acquaintances have long forgotten one Spanish-speaking American sailor, but I still long to revisit these ports of call with my wife. Though I think I will upgrade our mode of travel to a cruise ship. With no intentional disrespect to the Navy, anything will be more luxurious than a destroyer.

Cartagena, Spain, a bit more modern after thirty years (image via web)

Ed: this revised post was originally published here in August, 2021

generosity

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

I began an early draft of this post discussing the merits of self-employment, and about small businesses finding a niche in which to grow more successful. Coming home from a meeting of a local Rotary Club today (a friend is a member), I found another “why” for growing our business which is also a tenet of our faith: being generous toward others. Organizations like the Rotary Club donate time and money to a variety of causes. This week, we heard from a local charity chair, about a national effort, sponsored by a celebrity benefactor (Dolly Parton), to encourage literacy among children and young adults. I had believed, that this was an issue for other parts of the work, yet a surprising percentage of the population in the United States does not meet the literacy standards predicted by completion of Grade 12. This charity seeks to reverse the limitations that illiteracy holds over people. Another community program, funded by donations and community grants, helps feed and connect with isolated seniors and disabled adults. And lastly, we heard from a Rotarian who has spent a lifetime supporting an organization that, in one of the world’s poorest countries. directly educates life skills and provides training in a trade and material support to engage in self-employment.

I wonder what good news I will learn about the next time the Rotarians meet.

Ask the Chief: barter economy

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Ask any Navy veteran about the barter economy, and most of us have engaged in it. We knew it as “comshaw”, which was anything we obtained outside of official channels, generally by bartering items we may have more abundantly, or obtained as something we might use to trade with another division, department, station or military branch for an item we needed. I experienced this firsthand when I was authorized by my department to shop at the DOD/ GSA store at the shipyard for items we needed before deploying. A fellow Petty Officer on a ship across the pier needed an item we were authorized to purchase, but his shopping manifest did not authorize it. We managed to do a little third party transfers with other shoppers to trade up to what he needed. And it came with a guarantee to provide me with something when needed in return. Sometimes, a supply Petty Officer must use forward thinking to anticipate what is a good trade and whom to count on to return a favor.

What brings this to mind many years later is the current state of our economy. It seems that just about everything that homeowners and entrepreneurs may find necessary (or effective) is either prohibited by the State, too costly, or comes with excessive taxes, permits or other fees. A solvent for a barbecue grill, legal in many states, was returned to the shipper, and my purchase rescinded (Amazon). Or another example, a preservative that is effective for concrete in extreme environments is not legal here; however, a less-effective preservative with many of the same “aerosols”, is legal, but requires double or triple applications during the same multi-year effectiveness of the former single application. Sometimes it is just a little difficult to obtain something – the toilet paper or meat and egg supply issues in recent years come to mind- while others may have a sufficiency. Perhaps they might be willing to trade these for another item or service of value? It was not all that long ago that I read about a champion of barter, who had started with an older but valuable item (I think it was a musical instrument) and successively traded up to obtain real estate.

Many years ago, our accommodations in the seaside Mexican town where my buddies and I went scuba diving were paid for with equipment and other goods from the United States that then were difficult to obtain in Mexico. Today, as the cost of maintenance and repair for household or mechanical items escalate, and the government continues to find additional ways to collect sales and income taxes from the middle class, I wonder whether a barter system that circumvents cash and credit transactions will become more popular.

Comshaw may be the way of the future.

Ask the Chief: an entrepreneur’s approach to social media

Eric Saretsky2 Comments

As my wife and ISIC (Immediate Superior In Command), reminds me, opining, responding to, or worse, instigating a diatribe via social media is bad for business. In the last century, word of mouth, newspaper, radio and television advertising, storefronts and mail order were means to get products and services to consumers. Developing repeat business from clients was more easily obtained and was often a local market. It is almost exclusively through social media or websites that consumers are aware of an entrepreneur’s product or service today. Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Meta (Google), Tik-Tok or distributors such as Amazon are the primary means to advertise an entrepreneur’s wares. Inciting negative publicity can diminish a product or service’s availability on these platforms. (These companies also depend on consumers to regularly return to their platforms for profitability.)

As a result, when an inflammatory post, or even something innocuous that may appeal to an entrepreneur’s morals and personal beliefs, social media can quickly become a murky pool in which the original intent or comment is lost. As we have seen frequently, companies such as Facebook or Twitter can limit exposure for certain content. It might be a battle of wills with one claiming censorship and the other inflammatory rhetoric, but small businesses cannot afford loss of market share. This is the unfortunate reality today that we be friendly toward all.

Legal tender has no morals.

Ask the Chief: balloon hullabaloo

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A Chinese high altitude balloon carrying equipment has been carried along in the atmosphere over the United States this past week causing all sorts of ruckus. Their government has responded to United States that it was accidental, and not intentional, violation of our national sovereignty. While the balloon has maneuvering capability and seems to possess a sophisticated payload, the Chinese government claim, that it is an off-course weather balloon, is laughable. It would have been more credible had they claimed it was high altitude survey of their investments in the United States (the Chinese have invested some $200 Billion in the past quarter-century in US businesses and real estate). Though the U.S. Defense Department says the balloon has not ventured over sensitive military installations, and the Government has not ordered it to be shot down, one wonders whom is leading who on. At a time when the Chinese government has trillions of dollars at their disposal, building aircraft carriers, orbiting space platforms, and conducts espionage via HUMINT (spying on government officials, theft of intellectual property and technology by foreign agents) and COMINT (intercepting radio transmissions and hacking into computer networks), this balloon seems to be very low tech espionage for an adversary.

To gain military or economic advantage, nations have engaged in surveillance or intelligence gathering of their rivals for millennia. With the invention of radio communications, ELINT (electronic intelligence) grew exponentially as each nation devised more sophisticated means to mask their operations. With the satellite era, FISINT (foreign signal intelligence) was developed to intercept and analyze telemetry, determining a potential adversary’s capabilities and intentions. All of these have prompted increasingly sophisticated means of securing them from observers.

Determined adversaries view the long game to achieve their objectives. Years before the Second World War, Imperial Japan was sizing up the military capabilities of the United States to thwart their territorial ambitions. The US was then also decrypting their communications, which facilitated the Allies in reversing their early military successes and shortened the war in the Pacific. Since the end of World War II, the Cold War competition between two nuclear-armed adversaries seemed only to conclude when the economic cost to the Soviet Union became unsupportable. At the same time, China has also developed nuclear weapons, and provided enormous support to North Korea and North Vietnam militarily and economically, in two conflicts with the United States. In negotiations beginning with the Nixon Administration in the early 1970s, the economic benefit of a global market open to China has created their global power.

China is a different economic competitor and adversary. More students in China pursue engineering and science training than in the US or in Europe. International corporations with offices in the PRC have nationals working around the globe. With wealth from international consumers, the PRC has provided foreign aid to build (Chinese) militarily and politically-useful seaports, industrial capacity, and resource development around the globe. A balloon floating over the United States might be calculated to test our response, as a metric to China’s long-term foreign policy objectives. Two years of a global pandemic that originated in the PRC due to a failure at a government virology lab, and subsequent obfuscation by their government and officials in foreign nations (with ties to the PRC), lend themselves to being tools of future conflict. Another balloon carrying a biological agent does not seem farfetched.

The PRC has conducted increasingly bold military maneuvers near Taiwan, and is likely monitoring regional powers’ response to its client, North Korea’s, missile tests. However preoccupied the United States is with domestic problem, overt military action against Taiwan in the coming year may be a last option in their Party chambers. Through a century of international agreements, should an adversary attack a treaty partner (Taiwan), the United States will enter the fray. A surveillance balloon over the United States might be a metric to gauge whether the United States populace would be prepared to support that.

After this was published, it appears that the United States did shoot down the balloon as it crossed over into the Atlantic airspace. -February 4,2023. We know it had no civilian-use payload, as it would otherwise have been launched from a Walmart or an Amazon facility – the route most Chinese products go through.

on safari liberty

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

It does not take much to get old Salts, or two military veterans chatting like old friends. As a perk of his new job at the San DIego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, our son and his co-workers invited parents to go on a “safari” with them yesterday. Seeing giraffes, buffalo, zebras and gazelles in a more natural environment of several hundred acres, from the inside, was awesome.

In the course of getting to know our fellow travelers, I met Dave whom I instantly recognized shared a Navy connection with me. Though a submariner, a “bubblehead”, his quip “I could tell you what I did but I’d have to kill you,” is humorous code for those of us who performed duties that are still governed by national security regulations. As “spooks”, intelligence and cryptologist specialties, we just shared some laughs about those times over lunch after the tour.

Spread the word on a Ballcap

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New item

For more than 25 years, I wore a command ballcap as a working uniform item with dungarees and BDUs. And kept the caps as mementos long after retiring. I hardly go anywhere without wearing one. And they always start a conversation with another veteran.

Do you have a favorite that you wear still? A company in the Carolinas makes embroidered shirts for my employees, and last month, I contracted them to create these to spread the word about my blog dedicated to veterans and families of vets.

Building boats in the desert and the Rillito river fleet

Eric Saretsky3 Comments

Long before the “sand Navy” was an actual thing – those Navy servicemembers who did a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq during the war- I remember a man who was building a boat in the Arizona desert in the 1980s. While the region is still subject to monsoon flooding (late summer thundershowers that over centuries carved riverbeds flowing west and north from Tucson and elsewhere), I think the builder was overly optimistic. Until I saw what I presume was the same boat launched from the bay in San Diego some twenty years ago. There are other latter-day Noahs still building boats in a parched land. Yet, owning a boat seems to be a short-lived experience for most would-be mariners. While there are many sailing and power boats moored in marina slips all along the San Diego bays, I have seen many hundreds high and dry in storage yards far from the sea. And I live the experience through others. One of my friends, a Navy veteran, invited me out on his boat. Though I enjoyed the experience, I have not had the urge to buy one myself. It would also be another frequent chore to master; between financial and maintenance needs of boats, or cars, or homes, there are rare times to enjoy one. Perhaps, it is why I remember movies where a boat owner was spending an afternoon drinking beer, in his boat while it was stored in his driveway. But having a boat sitting in my driveway in El Cajon most of the year would remind me of one of my running jokes from long ago.

What still causes me to chuckle forty years later is my years spent at the University of Arizona when I would frequently tease a former submariner and fellow student about his participation in the “Rillito River fleet”. The Rillito is, and has been for most of the last several decades, dry but for the previously mentioned “monsoons”. Also, it was the closest non-body of water near both of our homes during that period. That he was a drilling Navy Reservist at the center located on the Davis Monthan Air Force Base at the southern end of Tucson, was amusing to me then. However, the “bubblehead” may have had the last laugh, as I too, became a Reservist there. Within less than I year, I submitted a request to return to Active Duty and subsequently spent the next twenty-three years on ships, and shore sites, from Middle East desert to tropical jungle. From performing observation and interdiction of narco-traffickers in Latin American waters, seizing smuggler’s vessels during a Haitian revolution, supporting Allied efforts in the Serbian – Croatian war, supporting no-fly zones over Kurdish Iraq, I fulfilled my promise to get back out of Arizona and go to sea.

These days I do not make light of any veteran’s membership in the “sand Navy”. They have seen and done some stuff. Whether Reservist or Active Duty Sailor, female or male, if they would have me, I would be willing to crew with them even in the dry washes of southern Arizona.

Putting your heart where your crow used to be

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Anybody who wears their feelings on their sleeve and has a harder, crusty shell – like I do – is definitely protecting an inner sensitivity.

Fred Durst, rapper, actor, musician (Limp Bizkit)

It has been more than twenty years since I was a crewman aboard a Navy ship putting to sea. With nearly eight and half years of sea time, all but several months of which was continually away from homeport, I relished having that connection to loved ones that the mail might bring. Where an actual package might take a month to be delivered, letters normally took half that time. And when email became possible, it seemed like those were almost instantaneous messages and response. Even during a busy OPTEMPO, Sailors need that connection to be reminded that what they are doing is important and that people back home have them in mind. We used to call articles shipped from home CARE packages. Moms or wives, or girlfriends (and now husbands, boyfriends and family) sent letters, cookies, magazines, and other mementos to their loved one afloat halfway around the world.

As former shipmates know, deployments and remote duty assignments can negatively influence marriages, relationships and personal conduct. Home life as a single parent is difficult without preplanning and a support network; many young marriages are tested by months of separation, and relocation every few years to different states or even countries. Sometimes poor decisions at home, or while on deployment causes emotional and financial distress. Away from one’s family or church, personal accountability is challenged. Working and living 24 hours a day among those who may believe playing “hard” is as important as working “hard”, personal accountability is tested (“poured into” one’s rack after drinking all day with your Liberty buddies, is overlooked once or twice by your leadership, but can be career-limiting as well as unhealthy). It is for that reason that connection with one of those families or young servicemembers, having walked myself in those boondockers, is so important to me.

The idea to continuing to serve our active duty men and women while they are away from home is not new. Legion and VFW halls, and USOs have done that for a century. But what eats at me is what am I doing to help encourage others? It is fairly easy to be someone who says they support such n such. And if someone says they are a supporter, do they provide some form of material support? A donor to a cause is needed, but asks little of that person. Putting additional “skin in the game”, is the one who participates in some activity, whether writing a letter, making a phone call, or taking a CARE package to the post office and mailing it. And then there is the one who is spurred to coordinate these efforts, obtaining the names of those service members your group or organization wants to help. Like the Chief, a job needs doing, and it is the Chief who sees it through. Sometimes your sweat, tears, and time makes it seem little is being accomplished. And yet there are those who will remember how there were people who helped make the separation – deployment – bearable. Being a Chief looking after the well-being of ‘your’ people never changes whether on Active Duty or retired for more than a decade. For the last couple decades, it is the members of my church family, neighbors, friends and former co-workers I have kept in my heart. Wearing my heart on my sleeve, though I no longer have khakis or dress uniform is still to help those serving today.